as a growing group, and engaged group, they can have elections in the future. >> nicholas johnston, thank you so much for getting up way too early with us. we appreciate you being here. to underscore the point, that's the project that stacey abrams is undertaking as she does work in georgia, the coalition of the rising african-american voters of color combined with the white house trying to get especially white women without college degrees to stick with the democratic party, is what they are focused on in these midterm elections. thank you for getting up early with us. don't go anywhere, "morning joe" starts right now. before we go, you're standing on a desert island, and you can only have one companion, your choices are joe biden, barack obama, bill clinton or jimmy carter, who do you choose? >> tough choice.

i would pick biden. biden and i did four bipartisan deals together during the obama administration. i consider him a personal friend. i was the only republican that went to his son beau's funeral. i think biden is a first rate person. >> yeah, you know. >> and talking about being the one who went to his son beau's funeral, as you know, mika, i mean, that means the world to the president. but that was a nice back and forth. >> very nice, yeah, actually, it was very sweet. >> noted yesterday that senator mcconnell was also complimentary of joe biden saying he's doing everything he can do. he can't run the legislative branch, too, he's negotiating in good faith. so, you know, it's interesting. i mean, if you try to make too

much out of something like that, then of course people go crazy. but it certainly is a nice change, and let's hope as we try to get a bipartisan bill, let's hope that all sides will come together. >> we're going to play more of that ahead, including mitch mcconnell's reason for not picking barack obama. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, june 30th. with us, we have professor at princeton university, eddie glaude jr., and white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. >> both of them on a desert island, the inverse is that not true. >> would they want to be with you. >> most definitely not. i'm putting that out there, i'm totally fine with either. >> with that in mind, why don't we start with the chaos in the democratic primary. >> oh, my god, how do these people ever complain about anybody else's voting problems?

i mean, new york city, and we've said this for years, it's horrific. it's antiquated, it's incestuous, it's corrupt, it's a disaster, and here they go, we're going to try to spin 48 plates on our nose while jumping on a trampoline. or some laymen may call it, ranked choice voting. they can't even get single choice voting right. and now they're trying this, and it's once again, they're showing just how incompetent they are. >> the democratic primary race for new york city mayor got even more confusing last night when election officials released and then retracted their latest vote count. just hours after posting new results that showed former city sanitation commissioner katherine garcia drastically cutting into the lead of former

police captain eric adams. the city's board of elections removed those results from its web site according to the b.o.e., 135,000 votes that were put into the system for testing purposes only had never been cleared. this caused adam's 10 point lead to shrink to a mere 2 points. adams, the brooklyn borough president had already raised concerns about the election process even before this mix up. new york city used -- >> by the way, i mean, you know, some people said, oh, that's like trump. no, look, my dog meat ball the cat have raised concerns about new york's election system. there's nothing dramatic about it, it's been corrupt our entire life. >> we have been talking about it for weeks, and, you know, having all different sides of it explained, i'm not sure how many

other places do voting like this, but new york city used this ranked choice voting system for this year's primaries. it's a method which had never been used by the city before and here we go, never tried anywhere in this country on this scale in a statement. >> i'm not going to call them idiots for doing this. >> in a statement, the board of elections apologized for the error, and said it had taken quote immediate measures to ensure the most accurate, up-to-date results are reporting. >> they then walked out the front door and went and married their cousins at the same time. hold on a second, jonathan lemire, let me read from the "new york times," just so people understand, when we have been talking about how bad new york voting is, now you always bring it up as people talk about georgia or texas or whatever, you want to vote in georgia before you want to vote in new york. it's just, you want to vote in texas before you want to vote in new york.

you want to vote in hell before you want to vote in new york city. and by the way, it's up to new york state to change that, and they haven't done that. so listen to this, jonathan, about this corrupt incestuous blight on american democracy, "the new york times" writes this, this is the history. in 1940, a city investigation found it was plagued by quote illegality, inefficiency, laxity and waste. that's in 1940. in 1971, a times editorial derided it quote at best, a semifunctioning acronism, and an embarrassing back of understanding. reform seemed inevitable after city department investigation released a scathing report in 2013. investigators found quote illegalities, misconduct, and antiquated operations, including

here it comes, here it comes, including that nearly 10% of employees were related to each other. when i say incestuous and corrupt, it is one of the most incestuous, corrupt agencies still existing in this democracy, jonathan. you work for the daily news, give us a little insight into just how bad it is. by the way, talk about how tough it is voting in new york. i called willie. i called all of my friends during the voting process, three hours, four hours. like it's always impossible to vote in new york. >> yeah, let's remember how slow they also are in tabulating results even setng aside this debacle but it can take weeks and weeks. during the last year's election, the races weren't certified far after states that had come under

scrutiny for how they processed their election, including georgia and others. new york state is terribly slow, and new york city, i was at the daily news for a long time, keeping a keen eye on this one too. and it is staggering just how incompetent it was. maya wiley, one of the leading contenders for the race put out a statement yesterday basically saying, and i'm paraphrasing, you can't be surprised at this point at how inept this process is because time and time again, they fail. as you mentioned, turning down money that could have led to improvements. to that, they didn't clear the roles of these test ballots where for hours yesterday, it looked like the mayor's race had completely spun on its head, adams lead had all been vanished to garcia, and then the board of elections just simply withdrew those numbers and took hours before they offered any sort of explanation as to what happened just further sowing chaos and

confusion frankly at a time when americans don't have necessarily a lot of faith in their voting system because of the doubts planted by former president trump and his cronies. i'll spare the yankee fan joke with the new york board of elections. this is just a disgrace and it needs to get fixed as soon as possible. >> joining us now, co-ceo and founder of the data and analytics company, sasha, and city hall and politics reporter for wnyc, bridget bergen. good to have you on this morning. why the ranked choice voting system? why? what was the benefit? what was the one good thing about it? what was the motivation given just how badly this is going. >> you have to remember, this was a ballot initiative that voters approved in 2019 and the reason for that was we often see

primary and special elections in new york city where we have a crowded field of candidates, and ultimately the winner may win with a slice, a fraction of the electorate. the rationale is it affords voters to select multiple candidates and in theory, when it is in san francisco and minneapolis and the state of maine, voters have the ability to know that the winner of the election has a majority of support from the electorate. i think in this particular case, the unfortunate thing isa lot of this conversation is going to be about ranked choice voting, as joe was saying, at the beginning of the segment, the problem is how elections are administered in new york, and the fact that this is an agency that operates, funded by new york city, but really is empowered by state election law, and it's really up to state lawmakers to make the changes necessary to professionalize the

agency, to modernize the agency, and modernize our election laws in new york city. they passed a series of reforms last year after the 2020 elections when some of those delays because of this increase in absentee ballots, because of the pandemic were cast, and those reforms were intended to prevent voters from being disenfranchised. one of the things we're seeing in new york state is we're seeing state lawmakers take actions to try to improve and expand access to voting here in new york but without fundamentally overhauling how the agency is run, and, you know, how it is -- how it operates from a professional standpoint, it becomes very hard to see those changes implemented. >> and brigid, it reads straight out of history books talking about boss tweeds, corrupt party machine. people are appointed by politicians, they're relatives of politicians. 10% of the people there are

related to each other. again, you're right, i'm not so concerned about ranked choice voting that just happened this week. this is something that's been going on our entire lifetime. it is a corrupt system. it's an incestuous system, and they keep getting away with it. any ideas on why the state legislature, why the governor, why others allow this to continue as it is? >> we have a system where the parties are written into state election law, and the people who are commissioners of our board of elections, we have 10 commissioners, two from each borough, one republican, one democrat, those individuals are appointed by the county party leaders, you know, using tammany hall parlance, the bosses of the parties in each of the five boroughs, and it would fall to the state legislature to make

these changes. as you can see, there's a catch-22. they have to stand up against the very leaders of their own organization to do that, and when you talk about reforming the board of elections and changing a system that has benefitted the people who are currently in office, you know, it becomes less advantageous to see how you can improve something that might ultimately end up with you losing your job. >> and they have relatives in there working so they don't want to upset the apple cart. >> you're stuck on that. >> of course i'm stuck on that. this doesn't happen in other states. >> it's really weird. >> this is particular to new york. i think it's probably the last state where you actually allow party bosses to decide who's running the division of elections. >> and this is a really bad time for this. >> think about the madness there. this has been going on our entire lifetimes. party bosses decide who's going to run the division of

elections. >> yeah. >> they make those decisionsment it is straight out of the 1930s. it's ridiculous. so help us out here. eric adams had a 10% lead, goes down to 2% when they decide to count. i don't know why. the scratching of dogs and cats on paper. you know, sample ballots, whatever it was. so those are removed, so tell us where do we stand now? is it still adams with a comfortable lead? >> so i think where we stand this morning is exactly where we stood a week ago, which is eric adams is in the lead, his lead is commanding, it's not insurmountable, and it's imminently possible one of the second or third choice candidates could overtake him, but it's not particularly likely unless a substantial number of votes come in that look very different than the votes that have already been cast. >> explain to me why it's not

likely that anybody will overtake adams, statistically speaking. >> sure. so statistically speaking, the biggest reason is there aren't outstanding votes. it appears there are 100,000 absentees to be counted. obviously yesterday we were thrown for a loop, when we found out there were 140,000 additional voters in yesterday's tabulation. it turns out most of the 140,000 voters weren't actually voters. there's about 10% roughly of the overall vote outstanding, and even though that vote going to be skewed dramatically toward places where katherine garcia overperformed in manhattan, williamsburg, those parts of new york are not ultimately likely to drive nearly enough votes with nearly enough margin to overtake the lead. >> when you look at the numbers, you have eric adams who won four

of the five boroughs, every borough except manhattan, that is certainly a widespread sort of victory. so it's going to be hard for anybody to overtake him. i am curious, though, eddie, what your thoughts are as we have been talking about election reform throughout the year, and have been talking about some of the efforts by states to make it harder to vote that new york city, basically, well, the economic capital of this country, and many would say the world has the most back ward voting system in america, and by the way, that's not just the city, i keep talking about westchester county, they would count two ballots every month. >> we tend to exceptionalize the south, tend to look at georgia and mississippi and alabama as the places where every day ordinary americans, and particularly americans of color are disenfranchised but we often

turn a blind eye to what we see elsewhere, and what we see in the context of new york is that in some ways, the voting process is actually in many ways compromised and terribly convoluted and difficult, and it's that way for a reason. it's in some ways to ensure that political elites maintain their hold on power, and i think as we begin to talk about for the people act, and as we begin to talk about federal efforts to in some ways ensure our democracy, that can't simply be located. that conversation can't simply be located directed towards the south, andew york provides an example of why that's the case in this moment. >> so city hall and politics reporter for nyc, brigid bergin, and sacha you're going back. we'll look forward to that. we're going to turn now to

national politics. president biden traveled to wisconsin yesterday to build support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill saying it's a symbol that democracy can work. but house speaker nancy pelosi may be putting that to a test. she's reportedly moving forward with plans to link the bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a second reconciliation bill by democrats, according to the hill, in a closed door meeting with her caucus yesterday, pelosi said her original strategy of withholding an infrastructure vote until the senate passes a larger partisan families plan remains unchanged. senate minority leader mitch mcconnell insisted on monday that the two pieces of legislation be separated. here's what he said yesterday about where things stand. >> so where we are now is we're in a stare down about whether one is connected to the other,

and what i would like to see is to -- what i know the 20 members, including 10 democrats in the senate would like to do is to pass the thing we can agree on, and then we'll have a debate and an argument and a vote on all the rest. >> okay. so it's a stare down. it's like they're two cats staring at each other, but together or separate, what makes more sense, why is this an argument? >> why it matters is you have hard infrastructure, which is about a $1.2 trillion bill, and then you have the human infrastructure which bernie sanders and other progressives are making out a $6 trillion price tag. no republicans are going to vote on the soft infrastructure plan. none. the bill will end up having too big of a price tag for them, and i suspect right now some conservative and moderate

democrats. so if that ever passes, it will pass with 50 votes and 50 votes only, and it will be a reconciliation. republicans and democrats have come together with this bipartisan plan, which is the hard infrastructure plan, which is $1.2 trillion. now, if i were still a republican, if i had a vote, if i took the risk of doing a bipartisan plan with democrats in this climate and then i found out that after i put my neck on the line to get everybody to 60 votes, i was going to be rolled at the same time with a package that's reconciliation with 50 votes, i would walk away from it, just like the republicans have said they were going to walk away from it. don't use me to make you look better. on the hard infrastructure plan, and to lower the price tag by $1.2 trillion if you're going to roll me in the end anyway, that's the logic of it, and that's why joe biden, after

slipping, came out on saturday saying no, no, no, republicans, we're going to pass the hard infrastructure plan first, and then democrats will get together and see if we can even get to 50 on the human infrastructure plan. which by the way, maybe they get there, maybe they don't. joe manchin, kyrsten sinema are a long way away. that's why it matters if it's separate. jonathan lemire, this isn't a stare down between nancy pelosi and honestly, this is a stare down, i mean, mitch wasn't even in the bipartisan group that was working. this is a stare down at the end of the day between nancy pelosi and joe biden. joe biden said on saturday what he wanted. he wanted a stand alone hard infrastructure bill with no linkage. if these reports are correct, it's nancy pelosi that is actually staring down joe biden and saying no, mr. president, you're not going to get your

bipartisan infrastructure bill. it has to be linked. and of course when you insist on these packages being linked and again it's just the reality of it, okay. it kills the bipartisan plan. nancy pelosi has to know that, and so is she deliberately killing the bipartisan plan? what's going on here, jonathan? >> well, let me take a step back and look at some of the dynamics here. first of all, there was always this belief, and working supposition that these two bills would be taken in tandem. they would be proceeding on two tracks around the same time, and then it was a question of sequencing. what changed is on thursday when president biden explicitly linked them and made the threat of walking away from the bipartisan deal if he didn't have the ability to sign the bigger reconciliation package at the same time. and that's what he cleaned up over the weekend saying no, no, i'll go ahead and sign the bipartisan deal once that's

done, and that seemed to reassure most of the republicans who took part in this bipartisan working group to put together that piece of legislation. but all along, pelosi and frankly schumer, the senate majority leader have said these two things are going to happen around the same time, and they want to bring both to the floor for consideration starting next month around the same time, and that's because they need to keep their democrats in line. the more liberal members, making sure that they are, especially in that house where the margins, we don't focus on the margins of the house nearly as much as the senate, the senate being 50/50 tie, and it's slim in the house, and there's a limit to how many defections they can afford. they need to keep the liberals just as schumer and the white house keeping their eyes on the moderate democrats like manchin and sinema. it's a tricky line, a balancing act that the white house and

democrats are going to need to hold to keep this all together, and they risk this potentially blowing up. at the end of the day as people close to the process have told me it's hard to see a scenario where pelosi or schumer defy the will of the president of the united states. they can bluster that comes with the territory, threats from capitol hill are very different than the ones from the white house, and if president biden says look, this is what we're doing, bipartisan first, then we'll figure out reconciliation, that's what will happen. they'll find a way to hold it together. >> eddie, maybe different sides are working different groups. maybe joe biden is working the more conservative democrats in the senate talking to them, nancy pelosi working the more progressive democrats in the house, and just trying to figure out a way to see this through. even if having these bills at the floor at the same time is not a political possibility. >> yeah, i hope so, joe. this is how the sausage is made, i suppose, you know, i guess one of the interesting questions to ask of course is are the republicans good faith actors in

this whole process. i'm not sure. and what the democrats have to do in this regard in order to keep the progressive wing in line. i mean, the progressive wing of the party as you have been saying all along, they have been very disciplined, but, you know, this is a risk in some ways, right? they concede to this particular compromise, this bipartisan bill, and then nothing follows from that, so i guess there is a risk that's being -- that has to be calculated here. so they're walking a tight hope as jonathan said, this is how the sausage is made, i supposed but we will have to see. >> and eddie we have to underline that fact, the progressives have been patient, but at the same time, at some point, you have to get the payoff from your leadership. at some point you say, okay, i'm going to sit here, and let washington, d.c. talk about joe manchin for six months, nine months, whatever. i'm not going to say a word, i'm not going to undercut my president, my speaker, my majority leader, but at some

point, there has to be a payoff, you have to throw something that we can take back to our voters, and i guess that's really, eddie, the most difficult part of the process because they can't go back home empty handed, being, you know, telling their voters that they were led around their entire two years by a conservative democrat from west virginia. i don't think that would work in brooklyn or in berkeley. >> i think you're absolutely right, joe. we've already seen the kinds of machinations around raising the minimum wage as it were, and we saw the discipline of the progressive wing of the party. with this issue with 116 degrees on the west coast, and all of the climate stuff that we're experiencing now, along with what we have seen in florida, and the questions around infrastructure, not only hard infrastructure but an infrastructure of care, i don't think there's a line. there's a line, and so you're absolutely right, joe.

progressives have to understand that the midterms require some deliverables. if the base is going to be excited, there has to be something to be excited about, not just simply bipartisanship. >> all right. and still ahead on "morning joe," new questions about whether coronavirus mask mandates may be necessary again. >> no, let me answer that no. >> for fully vaccinated americans due to concerns over the delta variant. >> right. that's where. >> we'll ask dr. anthony fauci. not dr. joe scarboro. >> there's science behind the delta variant, joe. >> i know that, mika. dueling heat waves along the east and west coast. millions of americans are under heat advisories as temperatures hit dangerous levels. also ahead, what former president obama is saying about the rise in misinformation. the kind that led to the january

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we are now entering day seven since a portion of a 12-story beach front condo came crashing down in the middle of the night. 12 people are now confirmed dead. 149 remain unaccounted for. more than 50 agencies and 900 personnel are working on the site, including teams from israel and mexico. no one has been pulled alive from the mountain of rubble since thursday morning hours after the collapse.

joining us now from surfside, florida, nbc news correspondent, antonia hilton. what more can you tell us this morning? >> reporter: good morning, mika. well, the situation here on the ground in surfside continues to be agonizing as we now stretch into the seventh day. there are potential storms coming, which could complicate and further slow down this recovery process. right now, they're averaging finding about one body a day. last night we found out that the death toll went up to 12, and that brings the number of people unaccounted for here to 149 and that number has just been completely overwhelming for people to process here. you know, this rubble site is incredibly dangerous. the workers have had to move through wind and rain and fires at times, incredibly meticulously. for the families, it feels slow, and the frustration is building. there's this public narrative of

the possibility of miracles, people who may be pulled live from the rubble and privately on a community level is what you hear is families growing angry and frustrating at times, and wanting officials to be more frank in their public statements about the magnitude of death that may come out of this crisis, and so, you know, yesterday, i actually got the chance to get up a bit closer to the rubble site and spoke to a volunteer who has been there every day, and what you see and what you hear is about a pancake effect that this building has collapsed in such a way that there aren't that many open spaces or maintained structures. it's hard for workers to get through the rubble, and it's hard to see bodies. that's part of why the process is moving slow. what you hear from volunteers is there's a desire for officials to be frank about the fact that they may not pull out too many bodies, families find out that they are receiving body parts of their family members, and there's a desire for there to be more honest about that.

mayor levine cava has spoken about it, and tried to talk about that grim outlook, but there's frustration as people are wanting to move forward with closure in their grieving. it will be interesting to see if president biden comes here tomorrow if some of the private conversations about grieving become more public because he is known for talking to families in frank terms about having an empathetic approach in these interactions and so, you know, i think there's eagerness here, as people know, he's going to spend quite a bit of time with loved ones here to see how the tone shifts here in surfside tomorrow. mika. >> very well put. nbc's antonia hilton, thank you very much. and florida officials are pledging to begin several investigations into the surfside building collapse. state attorney katherine fernandez rundell will pursue a grand jury investigation to examine factors and decisions that led to the champlain towers disaster. she also raised the possibility of potential criminal investigations, meanwhile, a resident of champlain tower

south filed a class action lawsuit less than 24 hours after the deadly collapse. the suit said the condominium association failed to adequately secure the building and at all relevant times defendant was aware or reasonably should have been aware that the plaintiffs and the lives and property were at risk due to the lack of precautions taken. >> so let's bring in right now state attorney for palm beach county dave aaronberg, before we get to the legal side, let's talk as two floridians who have seen boom, bust, boom, bust, boom, bust, along the coastlines. i did northwest florida, you know, for 30 years. people throwing up condominiums overnight, and then a recession would come along, they would go bankrupt, other people would pick it up. it was absolute chaos, and it's

been that way in florida since the beginning of the 20th century, a lot of booms and busts. a lot of condos that were built, you've been in them, i've been in them, we grew up going to friends' places, some were cheaply made, and you could tell they were built very quickly during a sort of a boom period. so i have been talking this week about '92, and andrew and the building codes that have gone up post '92. i wonder how tough florida regulators, florida legislators, florida leaders are going to now be on bending over backwards to make sure all of these condos, some of them built really badly 40 years ago, are secure for the residents. >> good morning, joe. i'm born and raised in north miami, which is not far from surfside. i know the community well, and there is the demarcation line.

in 1992, that's when hurricane andrew hit us category 5 storm, and that's when the florida legislature changed the building codes to strengthen them. before you had the flimsy buildings built, and they blew away in the wind, and now we have stronger codes but this has shaken the faith of a lot of people in the oversight. there's a rule in dade county that says you have to have recertification of these buildings every 40 years, but that doesn't take into account the new challenge of climate change, and so perhaps that should be changed to have a more frequent review, especially since there's new technology, technology that didn't exist 40 years ago. i think this is going to cause a series of investigations that will lead to changes if not in the law, at least in the implementation of the law. >> well, and dave, let's face it.

before this tragedy, i'm sure there are a lot of regulators, a lot of local regulators, city regulators, county regulators, state regulators that weren't going to go in and tell, you know, an entire condo of people living in a condo, hey, we're seeing some cracks here, you're all going to have to move out and fix this, now they're just, because this had never happened before, i wonder if there was too much pressure against making that dramatic, taking that dramatic step that would have saved all of those lives. >> and that goes, joe, to the possible criminality here. it's too early to speculate because we don't know what caused the building collapse yet, and we probably won't know for many months. i'm glad that kathy fernandez rundell, the state attorney is convening that grand jury to get to the bottom of this, but to have a crime here, you need more

than what's presently being reported. you have to have someone that knew that destruction was imminent and did nothing about it. that's different than what is being reported right now. there was that 2018 engineering report. the engineer hired by the condo association flagged major structural damage at the building, but nothing in the letter gave an air of imminent danger, and i think that's what you would need to rise to the level of criminality. plus, the board at the condo started to collect assessments to conduct repairs, and the repairs were incomplete at the time the building collapsed. but that's going to be considered by any prosecutor determining charges. >> and obviously the legal standard for civil liability much lower than for criminal liability. tell us about these class action lawsuits. what do those look like? do those seem to be standing on a bit firmer ground? >> yeah, it's much easier to

file these civil lawsuits than a criminal action, and there's been at least three different civil lawsuits that have been filed for negligence against the condo association for a violation of their duty of care to the residents of the building, for allegedly ignoring long needed repairs, and i expect many more to come, and you reported about a lawsuit seeking class action status, i think the actions will be consolidated into a class action at some point. and you're right, when you file these civil lawsuits, you just have to prove them by preponderance of the evidence. is it more likely than not that the defendant did it in a criminal context, you've got to prove that the defendant did it beyond any reasonable doubt, a lot higher burden, and you can't go into criminal court with a negligence claim. you've got to get more than that. you even have to get more than gross negligence. it's got to be up to what's call culpable negligence and in florida, the statute is

manslaughter by culpable negligence which is a second degree felony, punishable by up to 15 years in state prison. you have to show that someone had a reckless regard for human life. >> state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg, thank you so much. before we go to break, jonathan lemire, i want to ask you quickly about what you're monitoring as predicted, the former president jumping in on the new york city mess. >> yeah, joe, we were just speaking a short time ago, earlier this hour, about how this mess in new york fuels this distrust in the system that former president trump and others are trying to stoke, and he did just indeed put out a statement. i won't read the whole thing, we don't need to amplify it much further. because he calls into question the results, looks like adam is going to win. the presidential race is a scam, and hoax with numbers and results shocking, the mess

you'll see in new york city, you'll see go on forever. and son, and that's enough out of that. it does play into unfortunately the system, the fear that he and others have stoked about the legitimacy of election results. we have seen the poles. we have talked about them on the show, joe, about how many republicans don't think joe biden was legitimately elected and we're not projecting a precise repeat of that phenomenon in new york city. there are questions as to who comes out here as the winner, that people will doubt it was legitimate, and it's still going to happen as we head into the midterms in '22 and beyond. >> you know, the thing is, though, mika, i think this works against the president. all the conspiracy theories that are turned up by cults out of china that have fronts in the united states or russian disinformation campaigns, they all suggest that it's poor donald who was targeted, that poor, poor donald is the only one who's the victim of any of this. sometimes you just have

incompetence from election officials and it gets cleaned up. the fact that new york city does what new york city always does in elections and screws up shows that there is often human error, and you go back and clean up that human error, and yes, we will know, donald, whether eric adams wins or not because they will circle back and they'll count all the votes, and that will be that. >> you know, he's still, well, obsessing, anyhow, coming up, democrats like to say they perform better when voter turnout is high, but that claim is now being tested. plus, nbc news uncovers a link between a wuhan researcher and the chinese military. >> is that bad? >> it might be. >> is that bad? i don't know. >> we'll have the latest on the information into the origin of coronavirus. and dr. anthony fauci will be our guest this morning.

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. welcome back to "morning joe,". >> shot of new york city. >> of course. >> dramatic. >> looking at the brooklyn bridge there. >> it's 49 past the hour. so mika, i get this wonderful tweet, which is a treat. wonderful tweet from anne eichler, she writes, it's our 49th wedding anniversary and my husband is staying home from work to watch "morning joe" with me, #bestgiftever. >> that's so nice. >> congratulations, that is so sweet. and we're so happy that you two

are able to share this morning together. >> with us. >> this anniversary together with us. i don't know why you would want to spend it with us, but it means the world to us, and also this tweet, really, mika relates to this tweet very well because she's sharing this morning with me. >> feels like 49 years. >> she says it feels like she's already been married 49 years as well, so we have that in common. but thank you for the nice tweet. >> happy anniversary. >> thanks to your husband for staying home today and for you all sharing it. hope you have a great day today. >> that's really nice. giving all the really very different tweets that we see coming at us. >> all of them loving just like this. >> this is just sweet. >> fantastic. >> we talked earlier about the chaotic democratic primary race for new york city mayor, but there is another recent new york mayoral race that has gotten people's attention in buffalo, self-proclaimed democratic socialist india walton defeated

incumbent mayor byron brown last week in the city's democratic primary. writer and journalist matthew yglesias wrote this about this race, not as covered as the nyc race but socialists scored a big win in buffalo where only 20,000 people voted. it cuts against their official narrative, but the left's true strength is low turnout, low salient races. and matthew joins us now, and cofounder of the apple court, sacha back with us, and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and the host of "way too early," kasie hunt joins us as well. good to have you all. >> great to have you on. matt, i remember when somebody named aoc won a summer primary over a member of democratic leadership. it should have never happened.

i forget the vote tally was remarkably low. and yet she has moved on to become really one of the rising stars in american politics and certainly the rising star of the american left. >> yeah, absolutely. and you know, something i think we've seen is traditionally in new york in particular, you have a strong democratic party machine and they thought of these low turnout elections as strengthening the establishment. but in today's politics, you know, one of the big things the democratic socialists, they are very engaged, their candidates raise a lot of small dollar donations, we have the choice in buffalo, a couple of down ballot races in new york city, a race for st. louis mayor, a few weeks ago, where you had a similar result. these are the people in the democratic coalition who pay the most attention to politics and when you have elections that

kind of fly below the radar, that's where the left tends to do quite well. >> and obviously if i were running a base campaign on the right, fewer voters the better because, you know, one of the reasons i got elected is i micro targeted the people that i knew were going to come out and vote in primaries every two years. while my opponents were shaking hands at state fairs, i was knocking on those specific doors and it is that narrow casting, that narrow focusing map that helps more ideological candidates on the right or the left win elections. >> yeah, i mean, that's absolutely true, the most ideological people care the most about politics. they participate the most, and you have seen that as democrats have picked up more highly educated voters, they have started doing better in special elections.

traditionally democratic voters haven't turned out in midterms but i think that disadvantage may have gone away to some extent, and state parties should think about when they time their primaries. the new york state democrats are very cynical. these weirdly off year elections are not a coincidence, but it was supposed to sort of bolster establishment candidates against reformers, but today i think it really has the opposite result. it's empowering sort of far left groups that i think the party mostly doesn't want to win. >> and when you have an off year election primary in the middle of summer, you are begging for a small turnout, so take us through the numbers, how does this work? how do we have some of our most high profile candidates, or actually some of our most high profile political figures coming from primaries where they win very few votes? >> the answer in d.c. is at least because 90% of seats in

congress are safe, so it really is the primary that is determinative of the outcome and who ultimately gets elected. take aoc's seat, for example, she won 75% of the vote in her 2018 general election, which was the first time she was on a general election ballot. despite that, she won her primary with 16,000 votes in total. she was in the race for about 400 days. that meant she spoke to a couple of a dozen people a day and convinced them to vote for her. that's an impressive feat, it takes a lot of work to do that on the ground, but it's not a large number of people compared to a congressional district with 700,000 plus residents. >> that works on all sides, it works on the republican side. i was talking about in my case, when i ran as an almost libertarian small government conservative in a district that hadn't elected a republican

since the 1870s, but you have some trump acolytes who are also getting to congress this way. some with some extreme views. >> that's right. if you look for example, at mtg, the primary that originally produced her, this is another case where the rules of the election made a big difference, you know, in new york, aoc's primary was on a totally different day than the state and local primaries for your democratic office holders. for mtg in georgia, she had a primary, and then a few weeks later there was a runoff between her and a second candidate. the crazy thing is despite winning her general election nearly 75% to 25%, the democrat in that general election won more votes than were cast for mtg in her primary in total, despite being a very republican seat. >> so matt, what is the

implication for democratic leaders in washington of what's going on here? i mean, i can't help but think back to 2010 and the tea party when there were republican leaders especially on the house side who weren't paying attention and ended up with a lot of candidates who caused trouble when they turned around and tried to actually govern the country when they were in charge, and nancy pelosi, the current house speaker has done a little bit of a better job at keeping her progress i have -- progressive flank in the fold, it sounds like that's about to get harder. what will their strategy be? >> you're seeing the difficulty around the infrastructure bill, nancy pelosi is trying to appease the left members of ore caucus, creating problems for joe biden. the one advantage i think she has is even the most left wing democrats because they're democrats it's like they want legislation to pass. they want things to happen. and i think there's a certain lack of credibility in their threat to kind of blow things up

entirely. i do think the democrats should pay attention to the electoral rules questions. if they don't want far left candidates winning primaries they should try to align these things to dates when larger groups of people are going to turn out. the rules make a big difference to the outcomes, and you know, leaders need to design a system that is going to produce results that they think works for them, and for sort of mainstream democrats these days, i think that means high turnout in primaries. >> so i find this fascinating, you know, for me, the fact that far left candidates are being elected is not necessarily a bad thing. i take issue with the description as far left necessarily, matthew, but i wanted to ask you, sacha, this question. >> do you have a question, professor? >> do you see this as necessarily a problem? the way matthew is representing it? is this a problem with democracy? does this require that the democratic elite somehow fix the

system in order for idealogically diverse folk not to be able to gain access to this. why is this a problem when you see basically progressives taking advantage of a system that was supposedly initially designed to benefit those in power. >> i think it's actually pretty simple, the entire legitimacy of our political system is based off of people participating and when very very few people participate, that brings the legitimacy of the entire enterprise into question. if you believe that more voting is good and generally higher turnout is better, period full stop from a good government perspective, you know, we want elections that have as much participation as possible. we want people to show up and vote. to me, it has less to do with id making sure what the general amount of people want, and not a sliver people who happen to know the election is on a particular day, random months before

november happen to want. >> and again, it's not just the left. again, if i had my choice as the candidate i was as far as '94 running against a bunch of establishment candidates and i was the ideological, you know, balance the budget in five years, and you know, get rid of like four departments and everything else. i wanted the turnout to be as low as possible. the primary was in early september, everybody was gone in august. that suited me fine. i could knock on doors, get the most idealogically focused people to come out, and it was very easy for a candidate like myself who newt gingrich said was too conservative to get elected in my district, it was easy for me to win because, again, i was able to engage the most ideological, so it works on the right, it works on the left

as well, and as sacha says, you know, it depends on whether you want a handful of people deciding who's going to win elections or a larger group but i don't know, eddie, what do you think? sometimes people may want more ideologically driven candidates going to congress. >> i'm committed to the idea of democracy as being robust, we want as many americans as possible. i'm committed to the idea of blocking and tackling. the underground work of face-to-face contact with every day, ordinary folks, and we know the system as it's currently organized was designed to benefit those who hold power. and now that you see folks who understand the system, who are leveraging it in order to bring forth a different kind of agenda, people are screaming that something is wrong with democracy as such. we all want democracy to work, we need to understand blocking and tackling is at the heart of politics. that's how it works.

that's what i think. >> kasie let me get you to talk about the impact of this and what you cover, and congress, the deal making, day-to-day legislative process. certainly these primaries are not the only source of increased partisanship, doesn't it make it that much harder to meet in the middle, create common ground, what's your sense as someone covering the capitol, has this trend gotten worse and how much of a role does this play? >> i mean, i think it plays a significant role. i think matt's point about the differences between the parties and the basic perspective does really contribute, a lot of the republicans who come from the farther edges much more willing to blow everything up and say great, if the government doesn't function, that's perfect fine with us, then a lot of candidates on the left who tend to believe that government is a good way to solve problems, but

you know, what really happens when you have these kinds of candidates is that they don't necessarily have to answer to people to get reelected, and that honestly affected sometimes the quality of people who show up in congress, often times, some of the most successful hard working members of congress are those who come from swing districts and swing states, they have to get reelected regularly, they have to work on all fronts all the time, and they're also the ones that are most likely to get booted out of congress. so it has implications for the talent that's available to our government in general, and i think that's one of the trends over the last 10 to 15 years that has been troubling in many ways. there are a lot of people who as these kinds of people, you know, especially on the right have come in, it's gotten harder to govern. that's made it more frustrating for truly talented people who get elected in tough places to

enjoy their jobs and getting rewards of the office they hold, and actually are able to accomplish something, and that's a trend that should worry all of us. >> matt, love your news letter, by the way, it sound like your prediction is, your belief is that there will in fact be a deal done, a bipartisan deal done, and that nancy pelosi more progressive members of the democratic party won't undermine that, right? >> i mean, i think that's right. but obviously there's a lot of uncertainty. we've had a lot of twists and turns in this bill. but at the end of the day, i mean, it's not, i think, credible for the left to say they're going to blow up this bipartisan deal. you know, people say, well, you know, it doesn't have enough climate provisions in it. and i mean, i agree. it's not going to solve climate change. but this is a big investment in

mass transit, in the electrical grid, it doesn't important things with the network. these are things that progressives support, so the idea that they're going to torpedo it as a kind of bank shot way to gain lever raj over joe manchin, it doesn't really make sense. i think the president knows he made a mistake by tilting a little too far in the direction of things nancy pelosi is saying to manage her own caucus. he's trying to right the ship. it comes down to the republicans, right, if they decide that they would rather embarrass the president than move forward with bipartisan legislation, you know, they have the power to do that. we saw during the obama years over and over again, you know, republicans, they just didn't want to cooperate because it makes the incumbent president look good, and that's inherent problem with the bipartisan approach. >> matthew and sacha, thank you both very much for being on this morning. and results from the biden

administration's investigation into the origins of the coronavirus aren't expected until late this summer, but new reporting has uncovered interesting ties between a leading researcher at china's wuhan lab and chinese military scientists. nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons has more. >> reporter: this week more than 30 international scientists say china should not be allowed to block a full inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. >> we can't just give china a veto over whether or not we investigate the most terrible pandemic in a century. >> in january, a trump administration fact sheet accused china of secret military activity at a lab in wuhan. former state department adviser david asher helped write that fact sheet. >> i'm very confident that the military was funding a secret program that did involve

coronaviruses. i heard this from several foreign researchers who observed researchers in that lab in military lab coats. >> a leading researcher at the wuhan institute of virology, dr. xi jang lee insists it's only a civilian institution. she was questioned this year by jamie metzel, a former national security official. >> at the beginning of covid-19, we heard the rumors that it claimed that our laboratory we have some projects with the army, these kind of rumors, but this is not correct. >> reporter: but nbc news has evidence dr. xi herself has multiple connections with military officials. she and others collaborated with a military scientist on coronavirus research in spring 2018. and with another military scientist, zhou yusen, an

article that scientist authored listed him in a footnote as deceased. nbc is unable to ascertain the circumstances of his death. >> and dr. anthony fauci will be our guest in a few moments. we'll be talking about that and all the other aspects pertaining to the coronavirus including the delta variant and masking. joining the conversation, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, and washington editor for aussie media, katty kay joins us in her new role. and princeton's eddie glaug jr., and jonathan lemire, still with us as well. great group this hour. >> this issue is not going away for the white house. where is the president? where is the administration right now as far as their positioning on pushing china to

be more forthcoming with the origins of the virus? >> you recall, joe, it was a few weeks ago the white house announced a 90-day review and the 45-day mark is when president biden is supposed to get an update. that comes in the middle of july, but the government's already sending signals that the conclusion may be unsatisfactory for those of us and there are many, who are looking to try to really get to the bottom of the origins of the coronavirus. the white house sending signals earlier this week that the spy agencies in charge of this review have said so far they haven't found anything conclusive. there's nothing definitive in terms of explaining the exact origins of the virus, whether of course it was as the leading theory had been for so long, from an animal, perhaps a bat and wuhan wet market or whether it was created in some sort of lab, an accident there, from the virology center, also in wuhan. the white house to this point is

waiting for this review to sort of be conducted and more completed before it really leans on beijing for more help. certainly there's more public pressure behind the scenes. as we know, the biden foreign policy, there's certainly a significant focus on china as sort of the central rival for this next century and beyond of america's economy, and its standing in the world, and there have been some preliminary discussions perhaps this fall of a summit between president biden and president xi jinping of china, akin to what we saw in geneva with president putin not too long ago. as we work towards that, the government is sending signals, that's when pressure will ramp up about this. right now they're preaching patience. they want to be able to finish the review. they may not get clear answers out of it. >> interesting. we'll be watching president biden's leadership through this, and david ignacious, has an

article for the "washington post," and david writes in part, biden's ability to be an effective bargainer is crucial because the stakes are so high. the country is divided but as we emerge from the pandemic, there's broad agreement that we are at an infliction point, head of the national economic council put it, deese outlined a plan for a new american industrial policy to compete with china and build economic and technological strength. the need to meet the challenge from china may be the best card biden can play in negotiations ahead. it's the one theme on which there seems clear, unambiguous agreement between republicans and democrats. biden's career has been spent in the glad handing black slopping world of the senate. his brand is passing legislation, but to achieve that now, he needs the discipline to

be presidential. >> mike barnicle, david ignatius, of course getting to the key point here that joe biden does in fact know how the senate works, i think better than most of the people that he's going to be negotiating with, and certainly better than any of the people who are covering him. whether it's on shows like this or whether it's, you know, in print. that said, david ignatius brings up a great point, different skill sets are needed when it comes to being the president, negotiating with congress, and right now, i'm sure he finds himself in a very frustrating position of wanting this bipartisan deal to be done but still having some haggling going on with members of his own caucus. leaders from his own caucus. >> yeah, joe, you know very well, mika, you know very well that president biden has always sought a bipartisan agreement on

everything. on what kind of an ice cream cone you're going to order. everything. he wants everybody to be happy. he wants everything to be calm, but now it's time for reality. i think he's approaching reality from everything you hear and jonathan lemire might be able to bear this out. from everything you hear, the president is insistent now on if he can't achieve bipartisanship then they're going to go their own way, and everything on his desk is a crisis. it doesn't come to his desk unless it's a crisis. we're approaching a crisis on the legislation involved here, retrieval, getting a vote out of the house and senate on infrastructure bills but the larger issue is one you just mentioned, china, the future of the united states and china. china's global reach is epic. it's epic. africa, the middle east, i mean, we're getting out of afghanistan, china's relationship with pakistan is an impediment, so now we're going to have to find out exactly how

the virus began, where it began, and the president of the united states is going to have to enforce some discipline on this country's approach to china in terms of getting that kind of information. but at the end of the day, you are correct joe scarborough, joe biden is coming back to the fact that a reality based political universe that we live in, he's going to have to step up and enforce the law as president of the united states. this is what i want, and this is what i want to get. >> mike, you're certainly right that the relationship with china is sort of the through line, the sort of maybe one of the definitive guiding principles for this administration where we have started hearing this early in his term where he really talked about how he said the stay stakes of his term as proving that democracy can still work, that the united states needs to prove that it can work together, whether it's a bipartisan infrastructure deal or preventing things like january 6th.

it can still function as a democracy and deliver as a people a competition through the rising autocracies throughout the globe, namely china, and everything biden has done has been shadowed by that concept, that's animating principle, and certainly that will mean sometimes applying foreign policy pressure. sometimes that will mean striking a bipartisan deal as they hope with the hard infrastructure, and sometimes it's going to mean going it alone, and we certainly still have great questions remaining, facing this administration, as what it has to do with voting rights, sacred principle of a democracy. that's where the presidency, more than any other will be judged. >> yeah, and katty, it is not lost on our allies across europe, across the world that as the united states is consumed by political chaos, as it has been for the past five years, which peaked of course on january the 6th, but even continues now with

half of, almost half of americans believing the president wasn't legitimately elected. maybe that's down in the 30s now. we'll get an update on the poll. europe in the past five years and the middle east over the past five years have been setting their sights eastward, angela merkel saying at one point, we can't depend on the united states anymore, and china has been sweeping up allies one deal after another. i've got to believe that washington working in a bipartisan manner, getting things done, showing to our allies and our rivals that we can pass bipartisan legislation, we can look back at the 1/6 dallaser -- disaster with

republicans and democrats doing together, china on the rise and our rivalry increases with them. >> european leaders were delighted when joe biden went to europe and said america is back, and he did all of the right things, and he sounded like a traditional pro-european, pro-alliance american president. but you're right, joe, they watch american politics, perhaps more closely than what is good for them, and they know what's going on here, and the dysfunction in the american system. it's not a dysfunction of donald trump, this predates donald trump into president obama's turn, it was difficult and divided american government to get things done. they want a strong functioning american system that is engaged in the rest of the world, and in some ways, you know, european leaders looked at the vaccine rollout of president biden, and they were impressed with how well that worked. and that was the kind of america that europe has known in the past, right, that is the america that is competent, can get things done, is forward

thinking, is technologically and scientifically minded and that was impressive. the other big plank of the biden administration is to shore up america's role in the 21st century, and that means tackling china, and tackling china in a way that brings allies on board, and some of those allies are looking at china, we've got other choices at the moment. if america is not working. if america can't get things done, there are other countries in the world offering us money, offering us investment, and we're not going to totally shut the door on that possibility. >> and katty brings up a great point at looking how the united states developed a vaccine, how it distributed the vaccine, and after a year of looking at comparisons between europe and the united states where the united states was in a more difficult position over the past six months. they have actually seen what america got right.

>> yeah. >> and that is more of a return to normalcy. something that i hope we can see more coming out of washington because again, democrats and republicans, they're not each other's enemies. they're political rivals but our global rival china gets stronger every day we remain divided. >> right. and that enemy from within that we have seen recently is incredibly, incredibly important, and possible very destructive to our national security. meanwhile, former president obama was asked yesterday whether he's optimistic about the strength of our civic institutions. >> the degree to which misinformation is now disseminated at warp speed in coordinated ways that we haven't seen before, and that the

guardrails i thought were in place around many of our democratic institutions really depend on the two parties agreeing to those ground rules, those guardrails, and one of them doesn't seem as committed to them as in previous generations. that worries me. and i think we should all be worried. >> yeah. eddie, what do you make of former president obama's comments. he carefully chooses his moments about when to speak out about things like this? >> i think he's right on point. when you talk about misinformation, you're talking about the ways every day, ordinary americans engage in deliberation, how we're thinking about issues that face us. so if the citizenry is, shall we say, making decisions based on information that's not quite true, or based on information

that's false, it doesn't work. that's one things. the second point is this, when you have the guardrails have been removed, we're going to throw gutter balls to take the metaphor into a different direction. what i mean is this, americans have never had an opportunity to vote out of democracy. democracy is never on the ballot, but we have people who are in politics today who seem not to be committed to democracy as such and they're using the democratic process to push forward their agenda. so i think former president obama is trying to address those two things at once, what does it mean for every day, ordinary citizens not to be informed, to engage in decision making, to drive our democracy, and what does it mean for those who hold antidemocratic commitments to use the process to put forward the agenda. it seems as if we're on a knife's edge it seems to me. >> when the former president talks about the two parties have

to agree on the same guardrails, and right now only one does, that's actually a bit of an understatement. some might criticize president obama but he's actually being subtle. it's a bit of an understatement. when he talks about the guard rails, he's talking about constitutional norms that were ignored for four years, and that were basically blown through one constitutional stop sign after another being blown through, and the large number of republicans just sort of turned a blind eye to a lot of the abuses including a president calling for the arrest of his opponent two weeks before the presidential election. so there is much at stake when you have one party that seems to be moving in the same ill liberal direction as some of our allies in central europe.

>> joe, we can simplify this, i think, by just saying, yeah, we are in trouble, and the danger that's out there lurking each and every second of every day is the danger to our democracy, and when you factor in, you know, there's a lot of people who wake up in the morning, they get the newspaper, they don't believe what's in the newspaper. they hear talk radio, right wing talk radio on the way to work, and they think that's the news. they believe that. they are surrounded by disruptive episodes in their life none more so than the 15, 16 months that america was under siege and imprisoned in our homes by the virus. i think that altered everything in this country. it altered the way people look at our democracy. it altered the way that people certainly look at politics. it altered what they think of america. i can't imagine a more dangerous time in the last 100 years than the time that we're enduring and

going through right now when every institution of government is suspect by so many people, when the core of this country, freedom, liberty, free speech, the right to vote, all of it seemed to be under a question, almost each and every day. i mean, look at the results in new york city, and the mayoral election, people are questioning that. the questions abound about who we are, and what kind of a country we are. >> again, think about the political movement, katty kay, that is overtaking the republican party. you have american flags desecrated, being used to beat police officers. you have republican members of congress blaming the fbi for the january 6th insurgency. claiming, you know, a conspiracy that the fbi was actually responsible for leading that.

you have decorated members of the military who have served for 40 years, that served in iraq, that served in afghanistan, that are being torn to shreds and attacked by republicans. this is so dangerous. and it seems to keep getting worse by the day. >> yeah, and you have, you know, conservative tv hosts on fox news slamming the joint chiefs of staff, calling them, you know, terrible names. this is not the republican party that you knew, joe, certainly when you were in congress, that reagan would have understood. a party that stands up for law and order, that stands up for defense of the homeland, and stands up for people defending the homeland. that's all been turned on its head, and it's been turned on its head by donald trump and by

a desire to keep donald trump happy. it's very hard to explain it otherwise because the people who are slamming the joint chiefs of staff or criticizing the military or criticizing the people who have served abroad normally in a normal time, a normal political time in this country, they would have been supporters of those people, but it's only because those people have been wanting an investigation into january the 6th, have been pushing for some kind of accountability for what happened in january the 6th, have been talking about systemic racism in the country. those are things that donald trump can't countenance, so in order to satisfy donald trump, you take on the military, which is not a republican position. >> no, it is not. thank you for that, katty. still ahead on "morning joe," the rapid spread of the delta variant is causing some cities around the country to reconsider easing coronavirus restrictions.

dr. anthony fauci joins us next to weigh in on that and much more. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. welcome to allstate. here, if you already pay for car insurance, you can take your home along for the ride. allstate. better protection costs a whole lot less. click or call to bundle today. open talenti and raise the jar. to gelato made from scratch. raise the jar to all five layers. raise the jar to the best gelato... you've ever tasted. talenti. raise the jar.

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half past the hour. a live look at new york city. pretty shot this morning. there's once again some confusion over whether fully vaccinated people should wear face masks indoors. in a moment, we'll speak live with dr. anthony fauci. but first, our report from nbc news national correspondent miguel almaguer. >> reporter: mask confusion as a growing number of top doctors and now the most populous county in the nation, los angeles, says even the vaccinated should wear a mask and keep their social distance indoors. >> we're flying by the seat of

our pants here. >> reporter: breaking from cdc guidance, l.a. county is aligned with the w.h.o., citing the spread of the delta variant for the new voluntary safety measure. >> i wanted to wear a mask today. >> even the illinois governor setting an example but the backtrack on guidance just before gatherings for the fourth of july is sending mixed messages. >> implementing a mask mandate in the absence of, you know, broader spread of the virus is likely to erode the ability to implement these kinds of measures when we need them. we need to give the public a breather. >> reporter: gaining ground every day, the highly contagious delta variant accounts for 26% of covid cases in the u.s., and a new small study says mrna vaccines may provide protection for years with caveats, some even suggesting those vaccinated with j&j get a booster with an mrna vaccine. >> there's been a lot of

questions about whether americans need boosters or when they will need boosters, what's your take on that? >> many americans aren't likely to require or need boosters, i think it's likely to be reserved for a certain part of the population, people who are older. >> reporter: an evolving virus, and a shift on where and when to wear a mask. miguel alma gir, nbc news. >> before we get into the specifics, let me ask you generally how are we doing as we move toward the fourth of july weekend in 2021? >> in general, joe, we're doing very very well. if you look at the implementation of the vaccine program, more than 50% of the adults in the country are fully vaccinated. about 66, 67% of adults have at least one dose, and importantly among the elderly, the most vulnerable, more than 80% have received at least one dose. the cases themselves, the

hospitalization, the deaths, as a country on a whole doing extremely well. we're really very fortunate that we have vaccines that not only in the clinical trials, joe, but actually in the real world setting have been shown to be highly effective and safe. even against this very troublesome delta variant. now, since this is a big country with a lot of states, as you know, there are several states, particularly some concentrated in the southern areas that are under vaccinated. instead of having 70% or more of the adults vaccinated, they're down to 35% or so. that's the problem. so you're going to see really doing very very well in those areas that are vaccinated well, and we're doing extremely well that there are certain pockets of under vaccinated areas of the country where we could see a threat with this variant which has the capability of spreading quite efficiently from person to

person. so if you're not vaccinated, you're at considerable risk. if you are vaccinated, you're in rather good shape. >> i think dr. fauci, it's interesting, you talk about the deep south. i actually grew up in, well, spent a good bit of time in florida, georgia, alabama, mississippi, most of my friends are there from growing up. anecdotally, i'm starting to hear some people who were reluctant a month or two ago starting to move towards getting vaccines. of course tommy tuberville, who is a senator from the state of alabama actually has been doing public service announcements telling people to get the vaccines, despite the fact his base isn't particularly fond of politicians doing such things. are you seeing any evidence that some of those people that have been reluctant a few months ago are starting to move towards getting vaccines?

>> well, i haven't seen it personally, joe, because i'm not out very much in the field, but where i have gone on a couple of road trips to try and drum up interest in getting vaccinated, you're starting to see when people realize the threat of this very very difficult and problematic variant that they're changing their mind. just like the senate that you mentioned, that's very good news that he's doing that. i hope more do that. because when people see their leaders, particularly the political leaders doing things like that, hopefully they'll turn around. it's so painfully obvious, joe, that if you are vaccinated, you have a high degree of protection, and if you're not, you're at risk. so you have to ask yourself the question, what is the problem here? we have a situation that could be devastating, that is entirely avoidable and entirely preventable. >> so, let's just break this down and just, we ran the nbc

package before we introduced you. so let me just break this down on a personal level. my son and i went to see the red sox play a couple of games this past weekend. it was capacity crowd. he had some underlying symptoms, but he's been vaccinated. i have been vaccinated. everybody around us has been vaccinated. is it safe for us to go out and watch baseball games if we have been vaccinated without a mask? >> the answer is yes, joe. i mean, nothing is perfect, nothing is 100%. there's no intervention that you can say is 100%. there are people who are vaccinated who might get infected. that's going to be a low number relatively speaking. right now, that's the reason why the cdc recommendations have not changed, joe. if you're fully vaccinated, you can go without a mask indoor and

outdoor. now, there will be certain areas of the country, regions, states, cities or what have you where there's a high degree of dynamics of infection in that area, and that's why you're seeing some places like los angeles, for example, saying the better part is even if in fact you are vaccinated, i want to diminish even more this very small risk, and i think that's where the confusion is going. if you look at the broad recommendation as a whole for the country, at this point the cdc has not changed that. but there are going to be people who at their own discretion are going to say, you know, i'm an elderly person, i have an underlying condition, i'm risk averse, even though the general recommendation is you don't have to wear a mask, i'm deciding i want to wear a mask. joe, there's nothing wrong with that. that's individual decision.

you have to separate that from a broader recommendation from a public health agency like the cdc, which covers the entire spectrum as opposed to individual issues such as someone who wants to go the extra mile for safety. >> yeah, and of course, it's interesting, mika and i have noticed in our travels over the past month, actually, a lot of younger americans who have been vaccinated still feel more comfortable wearing masks as well, and of course that's certainly their right, and who would criticize anybody for going the extra mile, if that makes them feel more comfortable. let me ask you about the mixing and matching of vaccines we have heard about. mika and i took the moderna vaccine. we heard the efficacy of 88, 89%. pfizer was around 95%. i'm sure these numbers are moving around. j&j is at 75%. some people who have taken the

j&j vaccine are talking about mixing and matching, maybe taking pfizer as a follow up, as a sort of booster shot. is that safe? >> you know, great question, joe, it's asked multiple times a day now, and the answer is if you look at what you might predict based on what you know, and what the evidence shows, you're not going to get a recommendation to do that by a regulatory authority such as the fda or a public health agency such as the cdc until there is a clinical study, which is actually ongoing now. the studies are asking the mix and match question. we don't have the answers yet. so people are impatient, they're going to say, can i do that. if you look at it, there's no real reason to believe that it's not going to be safe, and there's no reason to believe that it's not going to be effective. and that's the reason why even though there isn't a science-based recommendation, many physicians, i know myself,

are doing that. they're saying, what's the problem, why don't you go ahead and get a moderna boost if you have a j&j, but it's not going to be based on a clinical study. it's going to be based on what is some reasonable judgment. it doesn't seem that that's necessarily anything that's going to be a problem. >> we saw in the package that ran before you came on that los angeles and some other areas are starting mask mandates inside. dr. gottlieb, who of course, as you know, we've had on and other people have had on throughout the covid crisis, has had a theory for some time and it seems to make sense to me as a former politician, and he says be very careful about putting new mask mandates in place unless it's absolutely necessary because if you're a public health official, if you're a leader, you want to preserve your credibility because we

don't know what's going to happen this fall when flu season comes, so be very careful about enacting new mask mandates in the summer unless absolutely necessary. because we never know what's coming two, three, four months from now. what do you think about his line of thinking there? >> i think it's quite reasonable, joe. it really is. i mean, particularly when you're dealing with moving targets like an outbreak, where you have a variant emerges and then it goes back down, and you have masks or not. you want to have messages that are based on scientific information. people are going to want to do things on their own, and they may be reasonable in their decision making, but when you're talking about something that comes as a formal recommendation from a public health authority, such as the cdc, you want to make sure it's based on scientific data. so what scott gottlieb was saying is don't go bouncing back and forth with mandates or no

mandates. take a look at what's going on, if, in fact, the information and the evidence make you feel that you want to change it, take it seriously, and change it, but don't be bouncing back and forth. because you confuse people if you do that. make your decisions based on data and evidence. >> and to underline what dr. fauci said at the beginning of the interview, if you weren't watching right now, there is no reason to change their guidance on masks indoors or out, wearing masks indoors or out. i want to talk about, again, anecdotally, what i'm reading in the newspapers, i want to ask you scientifically, medically, what you have seen in the numbers. it seems to me that every time you hear whether it was, you know, a dozen people in the new york yankees organization or friends that we have known in our personal life, people who have been vaccinated that caught

covid after getting vaccinated get covid but every single one that i've seen has been asymptomatic: are the overwhelming numbers of americans who catch covid or internationally, catch covid after being vaccinated, is that how virus runs in them after the vaccinations? >> joe, it's not surprising at all because you look at, for example, the numbers of let's take the mrna. it's against the delta variant, it's one variant, it's 88% effective in preventing symptomatic disease, which means already 12% of the people are not protected against that. also, it's less protective against asymptomatic disease, so it may be that if you really want to nail it down, and you want to get no symptoms at all, then you look at what the

efficacy is. it is entirely explainable and not unexpected that you are going to get people who are vaccinated who get infected, who because they have some degree of protection, the virus in their nasal pharynx isn't high enough to go in the lungs. you have a person infected but they're not getting symptoms because they have enough protection from the vaccine to not allow them to get symptoms. some people, a lot of people, so as not to confuse it who don't get vaccinated and get infected don't have symptoms. we know that a certain percentage of people, as much as a third of people who get infected don't have symptoms. if you have a vaccine, you have a greater chance of not getting symptoms, of not getting sick, of not getting hospitalized. that's the reason why even though vaccinated people might get infected, the risk of

getting serious illness when you are vaccinated and get infected is very very low. >> and so final question, now, we need to let you go, but i have got family members that haven't been vaccinated yet, and they say they're waiting for full fda approval. i have gently tried to move them toward the vaccination before that happens. i don't think that's going to happen, but that is something that a lot of people bring up that are vaccine hesitant. when can we expect full fda approval for the covid vaccines. i don't want to get ahead of the fda so i can't make a prediction. they generally want to dot all the i's and cross all the t's, i can tell you something from experience with other vaccines. when you get a vaccine that has been given already to hundreds of millions of people that has a highly highly effective profile

in preventing particularly serious disease, a very good safety profile, i think the chances of this not getting approved is extremely, extremely low. so when i look at that, even though it's an emergency use authorization, to me it's add as good as completely approved. this is as good as can be. this is an extraordinarily good set of vaccines, so waiting for the full approval, i think you really should rethink that because you might wind up getting infected when you could have been protected. >> right. all right. dr. fauci, thank you as always for being with us. we greatly appreciate it. and greatly appreciate your service to america. >> yeah. >> thank you. coming up, the lasting impacts of the record breaking heat wave in the northwest. plus, even if you're not a baseball fan. it's hard not to be impressed with the performance that angels

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here we go. the yankees beat the angels last night the bronx and three runs thanks to shohei ohtani. a league leading 28 home runs this season. he is pretty impressive. >> he is unbelievable. mike, ohtani hit home runs in three straight games. 11 in the past 13 game just he is batting .313 for june. leads the league with 28 home

runs this season and 49 extra base hits in 74 games. as a pitcher, a 3 in 1 record. 82 strikeouts through 59 1/3 innings pitched. in june 2-0 with a .235 e.r.a. over 4 starts. and of course, we never see him. never talk about him because he's buried on the west coast and plays at 3:00 in the morning there but this guy, he is -- there is not a player like him since babe ruth. >> joe, you know, he is more than just a phenomenon. he is the only player in my memory when he pitches he throws at 100 miles per hour at times, registered. hitting the ball and connects the ball leaves the ballpark over 100 miles per hour. big 6'4" guy.

multitalented. we don't pay enough attention to him because he does play in los angeles. if he played in yankees stadium like this week i bet he would hit about 80 home runs. strong. short right field porch and plays for a manager in joe maddon who loves baseball and made the decision to allow ohtani at the plate as a hitter when he is on the mound pitching. it is a tremendous show. i would pay to go see him. >> wow. >> it is remarkable. of course i think it's sad for at least east coast baseball fans, people love that game, two of the most remarkable players in anaheim in mike trout and ohtani and sad not just because we rarely see them on national games, but also, because they rarely get in the playoffs. >> yes. that's true. mike trout, that's a sad story

in a way you outlined because he is maybe the best baseball player to appear in the major league in the last 50 years. he is right on the same plateau as mantle and mays. he played far dysfunctional organization. the los angeles angels who have not been in a playoff game in 10 or 12 years, maybe more. the games with the time delay don't see him on the east coast tv but he is the best and teamed up with shohei ohtani is quite a pair to watch. still senate mitch mcconnell says republicans and democrats are in a stare down over infrastructure and not sure how it will play out. could we see the bipartisan plan that president biden is touting

unravel? plus, major confusion takes hold in the race for new york city mayor after a discrepancy in vote totals? >> they actually voted -- they counted over 100,000 nonvotes. >> yeah. all right. you are watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ack. one, two! one, two, three! only pay for what you need! with customized car insurance from liberty mutual!

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before we go, you're stranded on a desert island and you can only have one companion. your choices are joe biden, barack obama, bill clinton or jimmy carter. who do you choose? >> tough choice. i would pick biden. biden and i did four bipartisan deals together during the obama administration. i consider him a personal

friend. i'm the only republican that went to his son beau's funeral. >> yeah. you know -- >> hmm, nice. >> talk about being the one who went to his son beau's funeral, yeah, as you know that means the world to the president. but that was nice back and forth. >> very nice, yeah. very sweet. >> that senator mcconnell also was complimentary of joe biden saying he's doing everything he can do. he can't run the legislative branch, too. he is negotiating in good faith so, you know, it is interesting. as far as -- if you try to make too much of something like that people go crazy but certainly is a nice change. >> yeah. >> and let's hope as we try to

get a bipartisan billet's hope that all sides come together. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." wednesday, june 30th. with us professor at princeton university eddie gloud jr. and jonathan lemire. >> both on a desert island. the inverse is true. >> with you? >> i'm fine with either. >> why don't we start with the chaos in the democratic primary? >> oh my god. >> the chaos in the democratic primary. >> it is -- how do these people ever complain about anybody else's voting problems? new york city. we have said this for years. it is horrific. it is antiquated. incestuous. corrupt. it is just a disaster. oh hey, we are going to try to

spin 48 plates on our nose while jumping on a trampoline or as some laymen may call it like this ranked choice voting. they can't even get single choice voting right. and now they're trying this? yeah. once again they're showing how incompetent they are. >> the race for new york city mayor got even more confusing last night when an election official released and then retracted their latest vote count. just hours after posting new results showing katherine garcia drastically cutting into the lead of former police captain adam just the board of election removed the results from the website. according to the boe, 135,000 votes that were put into a system for testing purposes only

had never been cleared. this caused adams 10-point lead to shrink to 2 points. adams the brooklyn borough president raised concerns about the election process before this mix-up. new york city used -- >> by the way, you know, some people said that's like -- no, no. like my -- my dog and meatball the cat -- >> oh, meatball. >> raised concerns about new york's election system. there's nothing dramatic about it. it's been corrupt our entire life. >> we have been talking about it for weeks and having all different sides explained i don't know how many places do votes like this but a ranked choice voting system for this year's primaries, a method which had never been used by the city before and here we go.

never tried anywhere in this country on this scale. >> okay. i won't call them idiots for doing this but -- >> they apologized for the error and said it had taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate, up to date results. >> and then went and married their cousins at the same time. let me read from "the new york times." when we have been talking about how bad new york voting is, i always bring it up as people talk about georgia or whatever. i was like you want to vote in georgia before you want to vote in new york. you want to vote in texas before you want to vote in new york. you want to vote in hell before you want to vote in new york city. by the way, it is up to new york state to change that and they haven't done that. listen to this about this corrupt, incestuous blight on

american democracy. "the new york times" writes this, this is the history, in 1940 a city investigation found plagued by quote ill legality, laxity and waste. 1971, an editorial derided it at best a semifunctioning acronym and in '85 almost an embarrassing lack of understanding of its job. deblasio offered $20 million to reform. they declined. nobody's doing anything. reform seemed inevitable after investigation released a scathing report in 2013. investigators found quote ill legalities, misconduct and antiquated operations and including, here it comes, including that nearly 10% of employees were related to each other. when i say incestuous and corrupt, it is one of the most

incestuous, corrupt agencies still existing in this democracy, jonathan. you work for "the daily news. equivalent give us insight into how bad it is. and by the way, by the way, talk about how tough it is voting in new york. i called willie. i call all of my friends during the voting process. three hours. four hours. like it is always impossible to vote in new york. >> yeah. let's remember how slow they are in tabulating results. setting aside this debacle, but it can take weeks and weeks. last year the races weren't certified far after states under much more scrutiny for how they process including georgia. new york state is terribly slow and new york city and you are right. i covered a lot of mayoral races. keeping a keen eye on this one, too. and it is staggering just how

incompetent it was. maya wylie here in this race said yesterday paraphrasing you can't be surprised at this point at how inept the process it is because time and time again they fail. as you mentioned turning down money that could have led to improvements. they didn't clear the rolls for test ballots and for hours it looked like it spun on the head. adams' lead all but vanished to garcia and then the board of elections simply withdrew the numbers and took hours to offer an explanation as to what happened. just further sowing chaos and confusion when americans don't have necessarily a lot of faith in the voting system because of the doubts planted by former president trump and his cronies. i'll spare the yankee fan joke

here, joe and mika. this is a disgrace. a deeper dive into what's happening in new york city and why. >> i want to illustrate how ranked choice voting works. green peppers. right here. my number one choice. pineapple doesn't belong on pizza. we are not in california. okay? here is my sample ballot. quite easy. >> almost like you go to a pizza place but the kitchen totally screws up the order. >> gives you a taco. >> or a fajita. >> i like this. >> "morning joe" is back in a second. from prom dresses

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♪♪ joining us now, co-ceo and founder of the data and analytics company apple cart sasha sanmatan and reporter for ynyc bridget bergon. bridget, i want to start with you why the ranked choice voting system. what was the benefit? what was the one good thing about it? what was the motivation given just how badly this is going? >> you have to remember this is a ballot initiative that voters approved in 2019 and the reason for that is we often see the primary and special elections in new york city where we have these very crowded field of candidates and ultimately the winner may win with a slice of the electorate and the rational is that it affords to choose

multiple candidates and the ways is in san francisco and maine that voters have the ability to know that the winner of the election has a majority of support from the electorate. i think in this particular case the unfortunate thing is a lot of this conversation is about ranked choice voting when really as joe was saying at the beginning of this segment the problems have to do with the elections administered in new york and an agency that operates funded by new york city but really empowered by state lawmakers and it is up to them to professionalize the agency, modernize the agency and the election laws in new york city. they passed series of reforms last year. when some delays because of the increase in absentee ballots, the pandemic were cast and those

reforms were sbepded to keep voters from being disenfranchised. one thing we are seeing is state lawmakers take actions to try to improve and expand access to voting here in new york but without fundamentally overhauling how the agency is run it becomes very hard to see the changes implemented. >> sasha, so help us out here. eric adams had a 10% lead. goes down to 2% when they decide to count -- i don't know why? the scratching of dogs and cats on paper? sample ballots. whatever it was. those are removed. where do we stand now? adams with a comfortable lead? >> where we stand this morning is where we stood a week ago which is eric adams is in the lead, commanding.

not insurmountable and possible one or second choice candidates could overtake him but it is not likely. >> so explain to me why it's not likely that anybody will overtake adams. >> sure. statistically speaking there that many outstanding votes. just over 100,000 absentees to be counted. obviously yesterday we were all thrown for a loop finding out there's 140,000 additional voters and most of those 140,000 voters weren't actually voters. so there's about 10% roughly of the overall vote still outstanding and even though that vote is skewed to places where katherine garcia overperformed

like manhattan and williamsburg those parts of new york are not likely to drive enough votes with enough margin to overtake the lead. >> thank you both very much for being on this morning. up next, is it all or nothing for house democrats coming to infrastructure? house speaker nancy pelosi is rolling out her plans to link and bipartisan agreement to a second package of progressive priorities. "morning joe" is back in a moment. let's roll. is this some kind of a ninja boy band? huh?

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♪♪ we're going to turn to national politics. president biden traveled to wisconsin yesterday to build support for the bipartisan bill saying it's a symbol that democracy can house. but house speaker nancy pelosi is reportedly moving forward with plans to link the bipartisan infrastructure agreement to a second reconciliation bill by democrats. according to "the hill" in a closed door meeting with her caucus yesterday pelosi said her

original strategy of withholding an infrastructure vote until the senate passes a larger partisan families plan remains unchanged. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell insisted on monday that the two pieces of legislation be separated. here's what he said yesterday about where things stand. >> so where we are now is we're at kind of a stare doing about whether one is connected to the other and what i'd like to see what i know the 20 members including 10 democrats as the senate would like to do is pass the thing we can agree on and then we'll have a debate and an argument and a vote over all the rest. >> okay. so it's a stare down. like two cats staring at each other. >> yeah. >> together or separate, what makes more sense?

why is this an argument? >> what matters is you have hard infrastructure a $1.2 trillion bill and then you have the human infrastructure which bernie sanders and other progressives are talking about making $6 trillion. no republicans are going to vote on the soft infrastructure plan. none. the bill will end up having too big of a price tag for them and i suspect right now progressive moderate democrats. so if that ever passes it will pass with 50 votes and 50 votes only and reconciliation. republicans and democrats have come together with this bipartisan plan which is a hard infrastructure plan which is $1.2 trillion. if i were still a republican, if i had a vote, if i took the risk of a bipartisan plan with democrats in this climate and then found out after i put my neck on the line to get

everybody to 60 votes i was going to be rolled at the same time with a package that's reconciliation with 50 votes i would walk away from it just like the republicans have said they were going to walk away from it. don't use me to make you look better on the hard infrastructure plan and to lower the price tag. if you will roll me in the end anyway. that's the logic of it. that's why joe biden said no, no, no. republicans, well'll pass hard infrastructure plan first and then democrats will get together and see if we can get to 50 on the human infrastructure plan. which, by the way, maybe they get there. maybe they don't. joe manchin, sinema is a long way away there so that's why it matters if it's separated. jonathan lemire, this really isn't a stare down between nancy

pelosi and mitch mcconnell. this is a stare down -- mitch wasn't in the bipartisan group that was working. this is at the end of the day between nancy pelosi and joe biden. joe biden said on saturday what he wanted. he wanted a standalone infrastructure bill with no linkage. if the reports are correct it's nancy pelosi that is actually staring down joe biden saying, no, mr. president, you are not going do get the bipartisan infrastructure bill. it has to be linked. of course, when you insist on the packages linked it is the reality of it. okay? it kills the bipartisan plan. nancy pelosi has to know that. and so, is she deliberately killing the bipartisan plan? >> let me take a step back and look at the dynamics. there was always this belief and

working substitution that the two bills to be taken in tandem. proceeding on two tracks around the same time and then a question of sequencing. what changed here wizards on thursday when president biden linked them and made the threat of walking away from the bipartisan bill if he didn't have the ability to sign the bigger reconciliation package at the same time. he cleaned up over the weekend saying i will sign the bipartisan bill once that's done and reassured most republicans who took part in this bipartisan working group to put together that piece of legislation. but all along pelosi and frankly schumer the senate majority leader said they'll happen around the same time and want to bring them to the floor next month around the same time and that's because they need to keep their democrats in line. the more liberal members. making sure that they are, especially in the house where

the margins, the senate being 50 tie but it is slim in the house, a. there's a limit to how many defections if any they can afford and they need to keep the liberals happy just as schumer and white house keeping the eyes on moderate democrats so it is a very tricky line, a balancing act that the white house and democrats are going to need to hold to keep all this together. and they do risk this potentially blowing up but at the end of the day as the people close to the process told me it is hard to see where pelosi or schumer defy the will of the president. they can bluster and threats from capitol hill are different than ones from the white house and if president biden says this is what we're doing, that's what will happen and will find a way to hold it together. from same-sex marriage to legalized pot, there is a sea

change in the way america views many issues that were once highly contentious. what it means for other hot button topics debated in the public square. "morning joe" is coming right back. back usaa is made for the safe pilots. for mac. who can come to a stop with barely a bobble. lucia. who announces her intentions even if no one's there.

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welcome back. record breaking and life threatening temperatures continue to grip much of the country. the pacific northwest has seen unprecedented heat this week and now several states in the northeast are under heat advisories. nbc news correspondent stephanie gosk has the latest. >> reporter: predicted to be one of the most extreme heat waves ever recorded in the west and it is. at 4:00 p.m. monday portland reached 116. five hours later after the sun went down it was still 90.

in oregon and washington more than 1,100 people treated for heat-related illnesses. across the region rolling blackouts and while temperatures are finally set to dip the damage could be long lasting. buckled roadways and sered power loons. northwest salmon might not survive the warm rivers and crops are damaged. >> sounds like this level of intense heat we could lose all the berries. >> reporter: experts worry the extremes may become a pattern. >> this is the steroids make that what would have been a big heat wave into record setting. >> reporter: now it is the east coast east turn. ten states under advisories and emergencies in boston and philadelphia. >> planning to go in the house and staying under the air conditioner. >> we'll be watching that. nbc's stefrny gosk with that report. joining us now nbc sports soccer

analyst and cohost of "men in blazers" roger bennett. his book "reborn in the usa" is out now. roger, congratulations. >> thank you. >> roger, i have been wanting you to write this book for a long time. we have discussed on the air, i think people know, we have been watching for over a decade football matches together. when you and joey scarborough and i and others get together you would talk about what it was like living in america and you love britt tin and the country of your birth but you say that every time you touchdown at jfk you just -- you feel something

magical. you still after all these years feel the energy and the belief that anything is possible. talk about that. >> i grew up in liverpool, the most magical city when the city was rotting away. the coal mines shut down. and this once great port to take products out with an empire like baltimore but without the crab cake upside and the city falling apparent. unemployment. i survived this life lived in black and white by inhaling everything american. the musics, books, the television shows, the mighty chicago bears super bowl winning team and shows a possibility to live a life different where life is lived in color. with joy. and i persuaded myself and never

been to america and persuaded myself as an american trapped in an englishman's body and my book is about that journey from being a kid with the statue of liberty on the bedroom wall and the manhattan skyline to actually living here, having an american family and ended up in a courtroom saying the oath of allegiance and becoming an american which is the greatest day of my life. >> can you talk about that moment? you describe it so movingly in the book where everybody that's in there to be sworn in as american citizens that day happened to the first person who went up and after it was done people started applauding and tears started to roll don the faces of all of these people are different parts of the world understanding that something remarkable had just happened. >> i wrote the book at a time of challenge. sports had stopped.

lockdown had begun. the city of my dreams new york was the pandemic capital and when the challenge of the present is dark or worse black lives matter summer, the election, when the present is full of charge you retreat to times you drew strength and i did write this book about the idea that is my life, the american idea and that idea in a courtroom as i was in the southern tip of manhattan with 62 -- 162 people from 42 nations and many of whom through civil war, had escaped famines, terrible journeys to get here making mine just e scaling few late night beatings on a saturday night in liverpool seem tame but when you say the pledge of allegiance in that company you look left and right and see the idea of america is what drew

each one of us and tears throughout the room and the reality of america is full of challenge but that idea of america, of hope, of courage, of tenacity, belief of a life different than yours and a motivation to try to express that feeling and feeling of deep gratitude that i feel to this day and also to -- the 2017 a pugh foundation report that wirn europe 47% of americans had a positive connection to america. i found that devastating as a gentleman born, reared and raised on american soft power. >> you talk to immigrants that have gone through the process you went through. if you want to be inspired as an american that's a great place to start. because they do believe in the

dream of america. for the most part. and i have heard it time and again. we grow up and read about american soft power. western soft power. whether beach boy albums or beatles albums, bootlegs smuggled behind the iron curtain and actually that and blue jeans having an impact. you talk about how american soft power drew you to this country and the list is great. fantasy island. miami vice. rolling stone magazine. chicago bears. run dmc. beastie boys and of course the incredible -- had an impact on the life and pulled you to america. >> absolutely. in every way. i was in liverpool.

a dark and twisted time. tracy chapman took the stage. i remember watching at home. flung on this unknown by the organizers of the concert. armed with an acoustic guitar. 72,000 drunk english people. stevie wonder doing the sound check. lent into the microphone and drew mystical strength from "fast car" and watching that she silenced 72,000 drunk english people which is not easy to do. drew strength and turned women bring stadium into the most intimate setting possible. when you heard the message which was do not stand for what you currently are grappling with. make bold changes and get out while you can, when you are a 16-year-old and hear that message, it is because of tracy

chapman, the chicago beers super bowl winning team and said we have been terrible for 20 years and don't have to be what we are. we can flip the script. we can create a new narrative. each of these things seem funny on the surface. miami vice. only about cops and drugs on the surface. an animal farm is only about horses and pigging on the surface but a singular human being. no socks. espadrilles. being yourself. you watch that as a kid and like all the lessons of life are in there and sounds flip and ridiculous but when you watch this from a place of hopelessness it teaches you the lessons of life. they are bread crumbs that led me to live in new york city and to a place where they allow bald men on television which is the ultimate liberating freedom. >> congratulations on the book. it is so refreshing to hear this

in this particular news cycle and reminded of a poet and an idea grafted to a shadow. you've lived in this place. in a very dark moment. how do you square this understanding, this rendering of america in light of what you have seen in this place over the last five, six years? >> my idea, the central idea of america is one i had as a child. i'm now an adult and the idea is not the reality. your lines of poetry are utterly beautiful and the book -- it is about choosing a line that could absolutely destroy everything else i wrote and it's from langston hughes who ch are let america be america again. the land that never was and yet must be and in that that's what we are. i released this book ahead of independence day and i think about the lines that this

ultimately dedicate myself and i think millions of viewers do of closing the gap. >> so roger, same question put differently. for those who -- we mentioned a poll of people not necessarily seeing the american dream right now. in this present moment in time and this time in our history doing through our, democracy is going through a little bit of a challenge, that could be an understatement, what do you think you are seeing that those who polled differently are not seeing right now? what can you share? is it the hope of america? >> yeah. i can only say being in that courtroom and then voting for the first time as an american on the upper west side of mapt that pandemic election, 5:30 in the morning.

getting into the line to vote. this is the end of the book. the epilogue. i never voted before. i'd never had that incredible joy and responsibility. i toned up at 5:30. masks on to vote in the darkness of a frigid manhattan early morning and it was a line just -- a line that very much like the security line to my naturalization ceremony and i stood in line behind a 93-year-old african-american woman in a wheelchair covered in american flags. she'd never voted before but she wanted to get up early to make sure that she was first in line to vote and the excitement and the possibility in that line, i draw strength from that and the fact that i call my friends in england who i used to share the dream of america with. i felt devastated why what was this dream? what was this dream if this is the current reality? there were fireworks going off in london the night the election

was called. i said what are you celebrating? the dream we had as kids. what were we believing in? my best friend who is the through line in the book he said parties in london. berlin. across asia. parties in paris which was heart for any englishman to believe. i said what are you celebrating? he said we know like any dream it is not perfect but we can dream again about america and the last line of the book is the world is a better place when it can dream about america. i absolutely believe that's true, mika. >> roger, before we jump into being american, can i just congratulate the british side of you and say women bring yesterday may have been up there with tracy chapman and nelson mandela -- >> i do need to make clear. i'm very happy for the english. it is a beautiful, beautiful

moment. >> it was a great game. >> all itoo w me releasing a book about how i love america for the english to finally throw off the shackles of self loathing and defeat. look at the bum slide. and feel the glory. for a nation that suffered as not being germany in a big game since 1966, 55 years of trauma, locked down in agon to take the shirts off, air the tattoos, throw the beers in the air and feel what i guess is as close to happiness before they self sabotage later in the tournament is incredibly happy for them. >> i love the fact that you are still an englishman and see football may not be coming home but that's a good header. listen. i went with my husband when he went through the naturalization ceremony recently and for my i 'gree. we have had a years of feeling am bif lent but the thing that

struck me is when the judge was saying to all of these immigrants from and the world you're becoming american but don't forget who you are. you are also from ghana and trinidadian and thai and chinese and that for me was what was so generous and brilliant about the american experiment. don't forget the food and the culture and the literature. you are still german and english and can't think of another country that says become american but also stay whatever you are. it was a really moving moment. >> that's beautiful. i'll be candid. i am all american. i know i sound like a -- >> you are not. >> one of the most shocking parts of this -- >> if you are -- >> i have four american kids and

they self identify as british american which blows my mind. it is not an identity i think about but i do love that hyphenated identity which i don't. i am more american than kenny powers. i think of like -- not more american than bruce spring steen and never want to diss the boss and when the kids self identify as british-american it blows my mind and their freedom and the joy of the american experiment. complex, complex identity. not for me. >> roger, i agree. the self loathing. the insist tense to lose. there's english in you my friend. i do want to say this. i was talking to a friend who recently emigrated to america and talking about the difference

between america and other countries as far as how we're defined by the immigrants. and i was saying i don't know my exact lineage but my family lived in america for hundreds and hundreds of years. i think on both think on both so the 1700s. i don't know how far back it goes. but we've been here for hundreds and hundreds of years, and what i love so much about this country is that today, on the southern tip of manhattan, somebody is going to raise their hand, they are going to make an oath to this constitution and to this country, and they're going to be every bit as much of an american as me. and i think that's extraordinarily beautiful. i think this is a beautiful country. and these words, roger, before we go, again, let america be america again, the land that

never has been yet, and yet must be the land where every man is free. oh, yes, i say it plain, america never was america to me, and yet i swear this oath, america will be. roger, america is a dream that we all have to fight to fulfill. >> like any relationship, any love relationship, relationships are hard. you have to work at them, and the strengths and weaknesses and grind away. you said you've been here for hundreds of years. there have been a couple hundred years my descendants will have my nbc head shot on their dining room wall. they'll point to it and say who is that bald bloke? they'll say we can't remember his name, but he's the one in the family that brought us to america. >> the new book is "reborn in the usa, an englishman's love letter to his chosen home".

roger bennett, thank you very much. finally this morning, in one of bill maher's recent so-called new rules, he argued progressives tend to not recognize the progress being made on issues that have, indeed, seen major movement, like same-sex marriage. >> progressive phobia, that's the phrase coined to describe a brain disorder that strikes liberals and makes them incapable of recognizing progress. before 2012, every time gay marriage was put before voters, it lost. 35 times in a row. now it's the law of the land in every state. even half of republicans are for it. >> that issue, interestingly, and perhaps unexpectedly, has often defied predictable ideology. for instance, in 2008, proposition 8, a california ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment,

intended to ban same-sex marriage, was fueled in large part by blacks and latinos who had also turned out in large numbers for barack obama. obama had himself defined marriage as, quote, the union between a man and a woman, and for nearly two years into his presidency said he wasn't prepared to reverse himself. it wasn't until 2012 that he changed his stance. three days after his vice president, joe biden, famously forced the issue. >> look, i am vice president of the united states of america. the president sets the policy. i am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexuals are entitled to all the civil rights and liberties, and quite frankly, i don't see much of a distinction

beyond that. >> that was an amazing moment, and last year it was the trump-appointed justice, neil gorsuch, who provided the swing vote in one of the most sweeping lgbtq rights rulings in supreme court history, protecting gay and transgender people from workplace discrimination. let's bring in author and reporter sasha eisenberg who teaches in the political science department at ucla, and is out now with a book "the engagement, america's quarter century struggle over same-sex marriage", also "new york times" reporter jeremy peters. >> great to have you with us. sasha, it's remarkable how quickly things have changed. 2004, of course, same-sex marriage bans, ballots were used to help elect a republican

president in 2004. we just talked about barack obama in 2008 saying marriage is between a man and a woman, and m 2012 finally reversing his course. and yet here we are, nine years later that, and donald trump's appointees to the supreme court are perhaps writing some of the most sweeping opinions ever on the issue of lgbtq rights. >> yeah, it's one of the remarkable things over the last six years, joe, how little backlash there's been to the supreme court's landmark ruling in june 2015. i certainly expected if you had somebody like donald trump, who really just has an instinct for pitting americans against one another, announced his candidacy for president the same month you had a sweeping civil rights opinion that overturned state laws in a variety of red states, that you would see the type of

backlash we saw in other monumental decisions and there hasn't been that in the last six years. >> jeremy peters is with us and has a question. >> sasha, great reporting, excellent book. i can't wait to finish it. and i wondered, in your reporting of this long history of the gay marriage rights movement, to what extent did you find that money and campaign donations to individual state lawmakers when these laws were being debated about a decade ago, was the real factor, versus the real human-to-human lobbying that went on in these legislators where you had gay rights activists going to state senators, assemblymen and showing them gay couples and families, saying these are people just like you, they have dreams and aspirations and love for one another just like you have for your wife. and i know the activists said that was very effective. but i do wonder if a little

greasing of the palm of campaign contributions was also a significant factor. >> absolutely, jeremy. and you covered this in albany. i think they went hand in hand. part of the ability to do lobbying was a professionalization of gay rights activism starting in the 1980s and the group of gay donors, you know, millionaires and billionaires working in secret for many years that helped raise marriage to the top of the gay rights agenda. one of the things they were able to do was to go into states and change the way that they were fighting these ballot measures that joe mentioned, and also running lobbying campaigns. and part of the shift that you see before 2012 was an ability to start focusing on why -- on putting gays and lesbians front and center in the campaigns and trying to communicate to persuadable voters basically that gays and lesbians want to marry for the same reasons that

straight people do. >> i want to ask you this question. there's often this kind of a -- >> title professor. >> there's often an assumption that the lgbtq community, because of their identity, are progressive. but how do we think about the wide idealogical spectrum that defines this commute and how it impacts the way that gay marriage has become a part of the culture at this moment, the fact that we have to think about it as a diverse space. >> there are active debates in the movement about whether marriage was even desirable and there was a sort of liberationist wing, feminist wing of what we call the lgbt rights movement that thought marriage would be counterproductive to the cause of gay liberation. ironically, the thing that unites the community at large around marriage as an objective is opponents start to take it

seriously. what happens in the mid-90s as the act begins to move to congress is that gays and lesbians see that their opponents have made stopping them from marrying a top item on their agenda, and all of a sudden people who had been opposed to marriage or thought it should be low priority, realize if our opponents are fighting so hard to stop us from getting this, we need to be on the other side of the battle. >> the new book is "the engagement, america's quarter century struggle over same-sex marriage". thank you very much for being on the show and congratulations on the book. >> and, eddie, i want to end with the end of langston hughes' poem, and it fits so much with what we talk about, two things being true at the same time, and going through the struggles of what we're going through, but still pursuing the ideal,

pursuing the dream. out of the rack and ruin of our gangster depth, the stealth and lies, we the people must redeem the land, the minds, the plants, the rivers, the mountains and the endless plain, all, all the stretch of these great green states, and make america great again. final thoughts? >> fascinating. america is an argument. we don't need to seed it to folks who think it is one thing. it's an argument to be made and had and fought over. let's fight for a more just america and langston hughes made that really clear to us. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi, there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's wednesday, june 30th and there is a ton going on. today the house is set to vote on a bill that will establish a committee t